The Sacrifice. Joyce Carol Oates

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СКАЧАТЬ Hispanic.” The others were dark-Hispanic, African-American. Yet, she’d acted scared of us.

      She was terrified! Just so scared …

      She wasn’t hysterical but she was—she wasn’t—you had to concur she wasn’t in her right mind and under these circumstances you couldn’t blame her for not cooperating. She didn’t seem to understand where she was, or what was happening …

      She understood exactly where she was, and exactly what was happening. She didn’t wish to cooperate, that’s all.

      I did wonder why she wasn’t crying—most girls would’ve been crying by now. Most women.

      We treated her for face wounds. Lacerations, black eyes, mashed nose, bloody lip. A couple of loosened teeth where he’d punched her. (You could almost see the imprint of a man’s fist in her jaw. But he hadn’t strangled her, there were no red marks around her throat.) The blood wasn’t fresh but had coagulated in her nostrils, in her hair, etc. By their discolorations you could see that the bruises were at least twenty-four hours old. Also the blackened eyes. We gave her stitches for the deepest cuts in her eyebrow and on her upper lip. She reacted to the stitches and disinfectant so we had to hold her down but she still didn’t say any actual words only just Noooo. We wondered if she was, like, a Dominican who didn’t know English, or—there’s Nigerians in Pascayne—maybe she was Nigerian …

      There were Hispanic nurses we called in, to try to talk to her in Spanish—she ignored them completely.

      Where (presumably) the rope had been tied around her wrists and ankles there were only faint red abrasions on the skin. No deep abrasions, welts, or cuts.

      We couldn’t get a blood sample. That wasn’t going to happen just yet.

      Pascayne police officers were just arriving at the factory when the EMTs bore the girl away in the ambulance. The bloodied tarpaulin and other items were left there for the police to examine and take away as evidence.

      Soon then, police officers began to arrive at St. Anne’s ER.

      The hard part was—the pelvic exam …

      We had to determine if she’d been raped. Had to take semen samples if we could. Any kind of evidence like pubic hairs, we had to gather for a rape kit, but the girl was becoming hysterical, not pretending but genuinely hysterical kicking and screaming No no don’t hurt me NO! Dr. D___ was angry that the girl seemed determined to prevent a thorough examination though such an examination was in her own best interests of course. We were able to examine her and treat her superficially and it took quite a while to accomplish that with her kicking, screaming, and hyperventilating and the orderlies having to hold her down …

      (Now we knew, at least—she could speak English.)

      She continued to refuse to allow Dr. D___ to examine her just clamped her legs together tight and screaming so Dr. D___—(flush-faced, upset)—asked one of the female interns to examine her; this young woman, Dr. T___, was a light-skinned Indian-American who was able to calm the girl to a degree and examined her pelvic area by placing a paper cover over the girl’s lower body but when Dr. T___ tried to insert a speculum into the girl’s vagina the girl went crazy again kicking and screaming like she was being murdered.

      Like she was being raped …

      It was a terrible thing to witness. Those of us who were there, some of us were very upset with Dr. D___’s handling of the situation.

      By this time, the mother had arrived. The mother had been notified and someone had driven her to the hospital and before security could stop her she’d run into the ER hearing her daughter’s screams and began screaming herself and behind her, several other female relatives, or neighbors—all these women screaming and our security officers overwhelmed trying to control the scene …

      Pascayne police arrived at the ER. Trying to ask questions and the girl refused to acknowledge anyone shutting her eyes tight and screaming she wanted to go home and the mother was saying My baby! My baby! What did they do to my baby!

      You couldn’t get near the girl without her screaming, kicking and clawing. We’d have sedated her but the mother was threatening to sue us if we didn’t release her daughter.

      (It is strange that a mother would want her daughter released into her custody out of the ER, before she knew the extent of her daughter’s injuries. It is strange that the mother, like the daughter, refused X-rays, a blood test, but it is not so very uncommon under these circumstances. We are accustomed to delusional behavior and violence in the ER. We are accustomed to patients dying in the ER and their relatives going berserk. Yet, this seemed like a special case.)

      We were trying to explain: the girl had to have X-rays before being discharged.

      It was crucial, the girl had to have X-rays.

      If she’d suffered a concussion, or had a hairline fracture in her skull, or had broken or sprained bones—it was crucial to determine this before she left the hospital.

      If there was bleeding in her brain, for instance.

      And we needed to do blood work. We needed to draw blood.

      Mrs. Frye didn’t give a damn for any of this. In a furious voice saying how her daughter had been missing three days and three nights and wherever she’d been there were people who knew more than they were revealing and she’d come to take her daughter home, now.

       They took my baby from me, now I’m bringin my baby home can’t none of you stop me.

      The Pascayne police officers set her off worse. When an officer from Child Protective Services tried to speak with Mrs. Frye she backed off stretching her arms out as if to keep the man from assaulting her. She was saying You aint gon arrest me, you aint gon put cuffs on me, you leave me alone seein what you done to my baby aint that enough for you.

      Mrs. Frye’s fear of the police officers appeared to be genuine.

      By this time Sybilla Frye was sitting up on the gurney with her knees raised against her chest trying to hide herself with the crinkly white paper and making a noise like Nnn-nnn-nnn—like she was so frightened, she was shivering convulsively. You could hear her teeth chatter. And now she was crying, like a child Mama don let them take me, Mama take me home …

      The mud and dog-feces had been removed from the girl’s hair.

      We’d had to cut and clip some of her hair in order to get this matter out. It would be charged afterward that we had defiled and disfigured Sybilla Frye—we had deliberately cut her hair in a careless and jagged fashion.

      Her body covered in filth had been washed but the racist slurs in black Magic Marker ink remained on her torso and abdomen, more or less indecipherable.

      (It would be recorded in the ER photos that these words had been written upside-down on Sybilla Frye’s body.)

      (Well, you’d think—as if Sybilla Frye had written the words herself, right? But a clever assailant might’ve written the words on her body standing behind her so that she could read the words. Or—he’d written the words upside-down purposefully so the victim would be accused of lying. That was possible.)

      (Seeing the racist words on the girl’s body we’d had СКАЧАТЬ